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Monday, May 28, 2012

We cannot hear the barking

I am fortunate that the
incessantly barking dog in the next door apartment cannot be heard from our
apartment. We have big thick doors and walls and almost no sound penetrates.

But every time I leave the
apartment – or come back – I can hear it yapping.

Bandit

Now I have nothing against
small dogs. I don’t know why god made
them so noisy but I am sure there is a reason – just as I am sure there is a
desperate need for Irukandji jellyfish - although it’s hard to see what that
could be.

But small dogs I cannot
hear do not bother me much. Although I do wonder whether or not my neighbours
are deaf. Or is it that after a while they no longer hear the yapping and it
just becomes background noise?

I could ask my son Lenny
who has two small dogs – but I am sure they are very well behaved. Although the
crazy one (also named Lenny) was not present last time I visited. He goes ape any time there are visitors and tries to tear their clothes off and
urinate on them. I think he is a Republican.

In Sydney we had – for a
time - the neighbours from hell. They
bought the house next door and renovated it from top to bottom. But he ran a
building company so they only worked on the house sporadically – when his
business was slow.

This meant that a job that
could have taken three months took eighteen and we all nearly went stark
staring mad in the process.

There would be a lull for a
few weeks and then the hammering and sawing and yelling and loud music playing
would start up again at dawn. This would go on for a few days and they would go
away – possibly for a week – possibly for a month.

Muffin in fact did go mad
and licked all the fur off her abdomen and sides. It took her a long time to
get furry again and she never recovered fully.

Anyway they had two small dogs
who they kept inside while the building work was going on but once it was
finished they let them out of the house and they would have barking
competitions for about 22 hours per day.

They also sat in their back
garden and smoked incessantly (the people not the dogs). Apparently they did
not smoke in their house so as not to offend themselves. The smoking and the
dogs effectively destroyed our outdoor life and we retreated to our lounge room
and then came to Vienna.

Now we only have to worry
about the people who take their dogs out each day to defecate on the pavement.

7 comments:

It is a rule here that you must pick up your dog poop or you will get a visit from the city. There are actual businesses that specialize in cleaning up dog poop. My Sammy only barks when he has to poop.

After six and a half years I feel my Cooper and I understand each other pretty weLL. He does annoy my wife every once in awhile when he is just in the act of making a request. OveraLL he is a good dog, and I remind of that about 5 to 8 times a day. He just came in the living room and requested that I snuggle with him in the bedroom where the wife was already watching teleBision. It is a very good life indeed. But I wonder if a wooly mammoth might be as good of a pet. I am anxious to see how successful the Koreans are going to be in their cloning eXperiment, but the gestation period of an elephant (the surrogute mother) is 22 months, so I must be patient. I am sure I wiLL need to get a slightly sturdier fence for the backyard to handle a wooly mammoth. I am hoping that WM can eat Purina Elephant Food.

With summer upon you, is it quiet on your balcony? Surely they don't keep the dog inside all the time? Well, sorry, I hope they do.

Our most recent Lilyfield barker is called Buster. Since we pointed his offensive behaviour out to his owner, we've hardly heard anything from him. Which is just as well as Jim was threatening to go barking, mad, that is.

We have a cattle dog- Never growls and barks sparingly- usually for the right reasons. Great watch dog. Sadly we also have 2 terriers.. a fox and a tenterfield. The fox terrier is 17 years old and has one monotone bark which she seems to enjoy unleashing when she is standing against a wall. It is a bark that drives me to the brink. The tenterfield, ever since he got bitten by a snake, is a mental case. I detest both of them.

We have a cattle dog- Never growls and barks sparingly- usually for the right reasons. Great watch dog. Sadly we also have 2 terriers.. a fox and a tenterfield. The fox terrier is 17 years old and has one monotone bark which she seems to enjoy unleashing when she is standing against a wall. It is a bark that drives me to the brink. The tenterfield, ever since he got bitten by a snake, is a mental case. I detest both of them.